Murder Story of Stanisławów Jews on Belwederska Street in Stanisławów

…The operation began on August 22, [1942], at 9 AM, with the arrest of 2,000 Jews by the Urban Police. These arrests lasted until early in the morning of August 23. At about 6 PM on August 22, I and sixty others Jewish laborers returned to the ghetto from the "Aryan" side, where I was working. We were stopped at the ghetto gates by the urban policemen. For an hour, a total of 600 Jewish laborers were held under arrest at this ghetto gate. At about 7 PM, the commander of the urban police, Hauptmann [Captain] Streege, arrived, accompanied by several urban policemen. Upon their orders, we were taken, under urban police guard, to a square in the ghetto. As we were being led away, the urban policemen beat us with sticks and rifle butts, and Hauptmann Streege took part in this beating with great relish. We were held in this square by the urban policemen until 11 AM on August 23. As we were being led along Belwederska Street, I saw Jewish militiamen hanging in pairs from some ten lampposts. The next day, I learned that they had been hanged on August 22 by the urban policemen. Fifty meters from us in the square, the Jews destined to die were gathered, surrounded by barbed wire. They were guarded by the urban policemen. During the night, we were forced by the urban policemen to dig a grave for the doomed Jews…. On August 23, 1942, at about seven AM, the execution began, and it lasted until eleven AM [?]. The Jews destined to die were taken from the square where they had been gathered and led some eighty meters down Belwederska Street. Then, they had to strip naked and approach the edge of the grave one by one. Urban policemen stood at the edge of the grave and shot the Jews from a distance of 2-3 arm's lengths. The victims would drop into the grave, either dead or (in many cases) only severely wounded. After the murder, the urban policemen brought in several Jews and ordered them to bury the grave….

…In the summer of 1942 (I do not remember the exact month), the Urban Police carried out a liquidation operation against the Jews. The chief of the Urban Police, Streege, was in charge of this operation. On that day, I worked outside the ghetto. At 7 PM, as I was returning from work, I was stopped at the entrance to the ghetto by urban policemen. Along with my comrades, who also worked outside the ghetto, I was driven by the urban policemen to an open square on Belwederska Street, and held there all through the night. I saw the urban policemen, together with the Ukrainian policemen, drive the Jewish men out of all the houses and assemble them in a barrack 100 meters from us. The barrack was guarded solely by urban policemen. All through the night, we were forced by the urban policemen to dig graves in small groups. The next morning, I saw the urban policemen take the Jews out of the barrack, always in groups – and then, for hours, until 10 AM, I heard the constant sound of gunfire. When the shooting was over, I saw two lines of urban policemen marching away from the execution site, singing. When I went home, I had to pass by the graves, and I heard a man's voice crying from inside the grave: ""I am a Hungarian doctor, I am alive."…

…In July or August [1942], the urban police on its own, without any help from the Gestapo, carried out a sadistic murder operation. The urban policemen rounded up the Jews from their apartments and hiding places, and assembled them in a square on Belwederska Street (in front of the Order Service [ghetto police] offices), where a pit sized about 10x20 meters had been dug. Some 2,000 people were buried in it, almost alive. These people had actually been shot – but even those who had merely been hit on the hand by an urban policeman were buried. Some of the Judenrat members and about 10-12 members of the Order Service were hanged from lampposts in a sadistic manner, in pairs. The vice chairman of the Council [Judenrat], Mr. Goldstein, who was a bulky man, was hanged three times, and each time the rope snapped. He was then kicked by the urban policemen and shot. The faces of many of the hanged were unrecognizable, since they had been brutally beaten prior to the hanging. In this way, the victims remained on the lampposts for four-five days, and Poles and Ukrainians from the "Aryan" side were allowed to watch the hanged in the ghetto during this time.

…The younger of the Maurer brothers was in charge of the weekly murder operations, which were carried out together with Unterscharfuehrer [non-commissioned officer] Haas and eight SS men on August 28; September 4, 19, and 26, and October 3, [1942?]. All these murder operations involved the shooting of 500 Jews on a daily basis in the yard of my house in Stanisławów, on 81a Belwederska Street. All the Jews were held under arrest in the prison of the Stanisławów Gestapo, and they were taken from there to the execution site each day at about 5 PM. All the Jews had to strip naked in my yard. Afterward, all of them had to climb the embankment over the pit, where they were shot by the SS men and by Scharfuehrer Maurer and Haas. After the shooting of each group of twenty Jews, members of the Jewish fire brigade, who were present at the site, had to stack them one atop the other, so that the 3x2x1.80-meter-sized grave could accommodate 500 Jewish bodies. To speed up the execution, Scharfuehrer Maurer ordered the Jews slated for execution, who had to climb the embankment, to position themselves in such a way that, upon being shot, their bodies would land in the right spot on their own.

…Strege [sic for Streege, commander of the Urban Police in Stanisławów] ordered a so-called "punitive operation" in late summer 1942, and it was carried out exclusively by the Urban Police, with no Gestapo [involvement]. At the time, two Jews were hanged from each lamppost in the ghetto's main street, and they were left hanging there for several days. Also, 3,000 Jews were caught in the streets and apartments and shot….

…One day in early June (it was the 12th), as early as 6 AM, the murderer Krueger arrived in the ghetto and issued an order to the Jewish firefighting brigade to immediately start digging mass graves in the center of the ghetto, on Belwederska Street, in the large clearing between houses nos. 47 and 49. Several dozen Jews, under the surveillance of the Jewish police, dug the graves for their brothers and sisters. This time, on Krueger’s orders, the whole murder operation was to be carried out by the commander of the Urban Police, Strege [sic, Streege], with his urban policemen, and by the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police. These bandits were just as bad as the Gestapo men. As a pretext for this murder operation, the Gestapo cited the beating of a Ukrainian policeman by a Jewish provocateur. At about 10 AM, when one mass grave had already been dug, the entire ghetto was tightly sealed, and gangs of murderers began to pour into it…. The surviving Judenrat members were brought in first. Gallows had been erected at the edge of the graves on Belwederska Street itself. At first, the torturers took only men and boys, gathering them in sheds (former garages). The Judenrat chairman was about to be hanged from the gallows. To this end, he was driven by car to the so-called Umschlagstelle (a tenement house on Kazimierzowska Street outside the ghetto, where Jewish artisans worked for the Germans), where he had to select a rope for himself, and was then taken [back] to the ghetto. Before hanging him, Strege [Streege] gave a speech to the assembled doomed Jews, in which he cynically told those present that the chairman had actually been oppressing his compatriots by robbing them of their meager food rations, and hence he deserved to die by hanging. The first attempt to hang him failed. Because of his corpulence, the rope snapped. Strege [Streege] was deaf to his pleas to shoot him, and ordered to hang him a second time, but this attempt failed, too. Only then did Strege [Streege] shoot him on the spot and order the body to be thrown into the nearby grave. However, so as not to leave the gallows empty, he ordered to hang a fifteen-year-old boy. A special pile was thrown over the grave, and the delinquent [sic!] had to step onto it, whereupon he was killed with a shot in the back of the head. The victims were taken in groups of ten from a cottage across the street, where the wretches had to strip naked. The execution lasted through the whole day and night. Toward evening, the wives and daughters of the murdered husbands and fathers began to be brought in. At the same time, the Jewish policemen were hanged from all the gas lampposts along Belwederska Street, two from each post….

…On August 22, 1942, the Ukrainians spread a rumor that the Jews had wounded a Ukrainian policeman. At about noon on that day, three Ukrainian police detachments, Germans, and many Poles marched in and began a “pacification”. The commander of the Urban Police, Hauptmann [Captain] Strege [sic], ordered the execution of some 300 members of the Ordnungsdienst [ghetto police] for “incompetence”. Some of them were hanged from street lampposts. Some 4,000 Jews were murdered on that memorable Saturday, including almost the entire Judenrat of that time (Zuckerberg, Banner the pharmacist, Shipper, and Judenrat Chairman Goldstein, who was hanged twice by the feet). Before being executed, the pharmacist Banner told Obersturmfuehrer [sic] Krueger: “Shooting the Jews would not be of any use to the Germans, because you have already lost the war,” and was shot by him on the spot. The victims were buried in three graves on Belwederska Street. Members of the Ordnungsdienst were left hanging on the lampposts in public view for three days….

…On August 25, 1942, a punitive operation (Strafaktion) took place. It was said that a Jew had hit a Ukrainian policeman, and this operation was carried out in retaliation. The Gestapo entrusted it to Captain Stregel [sic for Streege], who was the commander of the Schupo [Schutzpolizei, Urban Police]. The operation lasted two days, and once again 6,000 people were taken away. Furthermore, Stregel [Streege] ordered thirty Jewish policemen to be hanged from the lampposts along Belwederska Street, two [policemen] from each [post]. Subsequently, entry tickets were sold for 2 złoty, and a great number of Poles came to watch the Jews hanging from the lampposts. There is a mass grave of the people murdered in that operation on the same Belwederska Street. All of them were forced to strip naked, and were buried.

…In mid-August 1942, the men were taken again, the entire Judenrat, some with their families [and] the Ordnungsdienst [ghetto police]. A total of about 1,500 people were taken to a private courtyard on Belwederska Street, where graves had already been dug, and all of them were shot there. The Ordnungsdienst members and several Judenrat officials were hanged from lampposts, two from each post, and a special gallows was erected for the former Judenrat chairman, Goldstein. He was corpulent, and the rope snapped. The Germans then ordered his wife to pick him up. She rushed to him, and at that moment she was shot….